Mark Leuchter, «Inter-Levitical Polemics in the late 6th century BCE: The Evidence from Nehemiah 9», Vol. 95 (2014) 269-279

The Levitical prayer in Nehemiah 9 contributes to the gola-ideology running throughout Ezra-Nehemiah, but scholars have generally recognized that its compositional origins are to be connected to the Homeland communities of the exilic or early Persian periods. The present study identifies features in the prayer which suggest that its authors were Levites associated with the Homeland communities and that these authors crafted the prayer in response to the exclusive and elitist ideology of the gola groups. The prayer testifies to tensions within Levite circles well into the Persian period and possibly even beyond.

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273 INTER-LEVITICAL POLEMICS 273
purpose of Nehemiah 8–10 by making this older liturgical work its cen-
terpiece. That this centerpiece is placed in the mouth of Levites is sug-
gestive of the sacerdotal typology that initially composed it and which
may well have preserved it before its incorporation into Nehemiah 8–10.
Of particular interest is the northern/Israelian linguistic profile of the
prayer as noted by Rendsburg in a learned study that appeared in this jour-
nal in 1991 19. From Rendsburg’s perspective, the linguistic features reveal
that at least some northern populations retained a sense of cultural and
religious contiguity during and after several crises involving foreign em-
pires, with Nehemiah 9 serving as a parade example 20. Tiemeyer has more
recently offered a different proposal, namely, that northerners mingling
with Judahites at the Mizpah administrative center which endured
throughout the period of the exile provides the basis for the northern, Is-
raelian linguistic features that Rendsburg noted 21.
None of these proposals demands that the prayer be categorized as a
product of Levites, but two additional factors warrant attention. First,
most scholars agree that the Levites in late-monarchic Judah are in large
part refugees from the fallen northern kingdom 22 and were thus already
given to northern/Israelian forms of dialect in their own traditional litur-
gies. The retention of these linguistic modalities among Levites seems to
have been quite durable, as the Song of Moses in Deuteronomy 32 (a
northern composition ultimately preserved in a Judahite literary work)
demonstrates 23. This is reinforced by the second consideration, and that
is the evidence marshalled by Lipschits that the majority of the homeland
population fled from the southern and central Judahite hills to the northern
frontier of Judah and the region of Benjamin, i.e., a territory where the
Israelian linguistic forms were part of native speech 24. Levites already pre-
serving northern/Israelian dialects would have been able to engage more
freely in the composition of traditions bearing this linguistic trait when
19
G.A. RENDSBURG, “The Northern Origin of Nehemiah 9”, Bib 72 (1991)
348-366.
20
RENDSBURG, “Northern Origins”, 365-366.
21
TIEMEYER, “Abraham”, 63.
22
LEUCHTER, Polemics of Exile, 105-107, O. LIPSCHITS, The Fall and Rise
of Jerusalem (Winona Lake, IN 2005) 84-85; H.P. NASUTI, Tradition History
and the Psalms of Asaph (SBLD 88; Atlanta, GA 1988) 194; COOK, Social
Roots, 65-66. For epigraphic evidence, see W.M. SCHNIEDEWIND – G.A.
RENDSBURG, “The Siloam Tunnel Inscription: Historical and Linguistic
Perspectives”, IEJ 60 (2010) 188-203.
23
On the northern/Israelian features of Deuteronomy 32, see G.A.
RENDSBURG, Linguistic Evidence for the Northern Origin of Selected Psalms
(SBLM 43; Atlanta, GA 1990) 64-65, 76-77, 99-100.
24
LIPSCHITS, The Fall And Rise of Jerusalem, 258-271.